The Moral of Moral Luck

In 1976, Bernard Williams coined the phrase “moral luck” to refer to the range of phenomena in which our moral status—how good or bad we are and how much praise or blame we deserve—is significantly determined by factors beyond our control. Whether we are naturally sociable or irritable, whether we find ourselves faced with particularly explicit or burdensome moral challenges, whether the arrows of our actions hit their targets—all constitute ways in which things we cannot control affect the moral quality of our lives. All, then, serve as examples of moral luck, which, taken as a group, make up one of the most philosophically perplexing and troubling features of ordinary moral experience.